Life, on the Line by Grant Achatz (book club reads .txt) 📕

had been with me for more than six years. During their time with me I had trained their palates to mirror mine through the constant adjusting and tweaking of the dishes they presented to me for final approval. I basically brainwashed them into tasting exactly as I did, and now I had no choice but to believe that they had been paying attention.

I drove myself to my first radiation treatment. A group of Chicago chefs and restaurants had offered to pool together some money to hire a driver to take me to treatments, and while that was an amazing offer from our community, I did not want to be seen as a victim. So I decided to drive myself as long as that was possible. Occasionally I would find it necessary to pull to the side of the road, vomit, and then drive on. But I had driven myself to all but the very first chemo treatment, so I planned to do the same for the radiation sessions.

A few weeks earlier I had been fitted for a harness to secure my head to the table during the radiation. This would prevent me from moving during the treatment and spare the areas of my head and neck that didn’t need the radiation and subsequent savage burning that the beams produced. Dr. Haraf asked me at the time, “Are you claustrophobic?” I replied, “No, I don’t think so,” although I wondered what he had in mind. He laughed and replied, “Well, by the end of this we’ll know for sure!” I guess if your job is to benevolently burn people from the inside out you develop a unique sense of humor. I smiled but didn’t laugh. I had no idea what he was talking about.

At my first appointment, Dr. Haraf and an assistant came in with the fiberglass harness, which was crafted to my exact dimensions and resembled the head restraint that kept Hannibal Lecter from, well, eating someone. It was intimidating and scary, but not claustrophobia inducing. Instead, I was far more scared that the radiation would hurt as it was being applied. But that fear was unfounded, and the treatment lasted less than thirty minutes. I got up, walked out as I had come in, and drove back to Alinea. One down, sixty-three to go.

I settled into a routine. I would wake up in the morning, try to force down some food, a protein drink, some Ensure, and head to Alinea to make my presence felt. Then I would send off a few e-mails about the book to Martin, the designer, or Lara, the photographer, then head to radiation. For a few weeks I deluded myself into believing that it wouldn’t be so bad. But then the scariest moment came.

The third week into my treatment I drove back to Alinea on a Friday afternoon. It was a typical night for us with eighty-eight confirmed reservations, thirty-eight of which were for the twenty-six-course Tour menu. Doing the math, that means that 1,688 dishes would need to leave the kitchen in the span of about seven hours. Three new dishes were hitting the menu that night, and a chef was visiting us from Spain. I arrived to find the kitchen humming, but not totally in sync.

At this point, the effects of the radiation were minimal. A light burn on the outside of my skin had begun to form, and I could feel a constant dull pain in my mouth again. Eating began to hurt more, but it was tolerable given the amount of painkillers I was on. As soon as I arrived at my station, right in the middle of the line, a chef de partie came up with a beige-colored sauce on a spoon. “Chef, is this what you were looking for?” he asked. This happens continuously whenever we introduce a new dish. We refine and refine until the recipe and plating are second nature, tasting constantly along the way. I grabbed the spoon, put it in my mouth, swished it around, and winced slightly from the pain. But that was not the issue—I was used to the pain by then. I looked at the chef, checked his face to make sure it was not some sort of joke, and then grabbed another spoon and took a second taste out of the pot. I called over to sous chef Dave Beran, and said, “Chef, give this a taste and tell me what you think.” A few on the line noticed and worried briefly that something was amiss. He hurried over, tasted it, shrugged, and said, “Seems fine to me. Maybe a bit more salt.” I shrugged, tossed the spoon into the bain-marie, and said, “Seems perfect to me.”

But mentally, I was panicking. My mind raced at a million miles an hour. I grabbed five tasting spoons, walked over as casually as possible to the stove and randomly tasted a few of the sauces simmering there. Nothing. I grabbed a pinch of salt, put it directly on my tongue, and it tasted—no, felt—like slowly dissolving sand. And just like that my sense of taste was gone. I had no idea how to react, other than to try to hide it from the kitchen staff, at least for the time being. I called together the sous chefs in the front dining room and said, “As I go through this treatment, I’m going to need to begin relying more on you guys to taste the nuances in the food.” Dave looked at me and knew the truth. He had seen it in my eyes. I couldn’t taste, and he knew it.

I walked back to my station and continued to prepare for the evening. Would everything be okay tonight? How would I know if it were off? For the first time since the treatment started I was genuinely scared.

And the hard part had not even begun.

Alinea was hanging together. Chef Pikus and the core group of sous chefs had absorbed the initial